Paper Thin Perfection
by sablize
Summary: Their life may look perfect on the outside, but on the inside it's thin as paper. Oneshot. Post-Breaking Dawn.


**Title: **Paper Thin Perfection (1/1)

**Author: **sablize

**Character/Pairing: **the whole Forks gang, canon pairings

**Rating:** (High) T

**Summary:** Their life may look perfect on the outside, but on the inside it's thin as paper. Oneshot. Post-Breaking Dawn.

**Spoilers:** Breaking Dawn

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Twilight, it would never have existed.

**Author's Notes: **Oh my _god_, what am I doing, writing Twilight fic? I don't even like Twilight. This is nuts. Too many quality people and their wonderful fanfiction have inspired this. Takes place a few years after Breaking Dawn. Sorry in advance for any mistakes, I haven't read the books in a while so my view of canon may be a little shoddy.

When people gossip about the Cullens—not very often, but still— it's always an "Oh, they're very quiet" and "Doctor Cullen is so handsome," or sometimes a "They went to high school with me." When the Cullens gossip about the Cullens, their lives are perfect, shiny, flawless like a diamond. When Bella visits Charlie, she tells him life is good (or afterlife, but what's the difference).

_Perfect_.

Sometimes she has to look up the definition, just to be sure she has it right. The black letters stand out stark against the smooth, white paper of Carlisle's largest dictionary as she traces her fingers down the list of words; _P_, an _E_ and then _R_-_F_-_E_-_C_-_T_. _Entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings_.

The diamond turns to glass, which cracks and turns to ice, which shatters and falls to dust.

—

The world is an awful, cruel place, and the future is dark and murky. Alice sees it.

Suddenly she is seeing more of visions than the real world, and sometimes she can't remember which is which. Some days they give her headaches that make her head feel like she's about to explode. Esme warms her blood and gives it to her in a bright yellow mug, then whisper-argues with Carlisle and wonders if they should give her human instead of animal.

On these days, Alice stays locked in her room and the house is quiet.

—

Renesmee is growing up. She longs to see more of the world, to escape the quiet life she's been forced into. She wants to escape Jacob's lingering glances as her body grows (though her mind is far ahead) and she looks up words like _child-grooming_ and _pedophilia_ on Wikipedia. Imprinting makes her sick, she realizes.

One night in late December, she packs a bag and doesn't come back.

—

It's been a few months since she's seen Charlie, so Bella calls him up and arranges to meet at his house. He says he has a surprise for her. She wonders, but doesn't expect what she gets.

The door to her father's familiar house is opened by a pretty blonde woman going gray, with bright green eyes and laugh lines. She introduces herself as Charlie's girlfriend—_girlfriend_—and lets Bella in the house. She doesn't make it two steps before emotions (of betrayal? Of anger? Of surprise? She's not sure) overcome her. Her teeth are in Charlie's girlfriend's neck before she can master the urge, and suddenly her transformation isn't quite as glorious. She might have been an anomaly at the beginning, but now she feels like a teenager who hit puberty a tad too late.

Charlie sees. It takes the combined efforts of Alice, Jasper, a book of hypnotism, a cheap bit of voodoo, and a blow to the back of the head to set him right again. He forgets he ever had a girlfriend and sinks back into the complacent, lonely man he was.

Bella is locked in her cabin and _it's_ _like the past few years haven't happened_, she thinks as Edward hands her a cup of animal blood through the window.

—

Long after the girlfriend fiasco, they deem Bella sane enough to be outside again. She stands in the sunlight the first day, watching as her skin turns to diamonds, and cries over Carlisle's dictionary.

—

Suddenly, Jacob is without a lifelong companion and without someone he loves. It hurts, the way Renesmee left. He turns to Leah, who rejects him. He doesn't expect it. It breaks his heart all over again.

When Edward starts coming home smelling like smoke and cheap perfume, Jacob turns to Bella. She's shrunken into herself, quieter than she ever was before she came to this godforsaken town, and her gold eyes are dull. But he'll take it.

She won't take him.

She's trying in vain to hold that picture perfect life intact. Jacob sees how it is ruining her spirit, but can't bring himself to tell her she's fighting a lost cause. So he leaves, too, heads for North Carolina because it's far away from Forks. For the first six months, the Cullens receive postcards in the mail—from New York, Quebec, Florida, Kansas, California— until they stop altogether.

—

Eternity is a long time, Esme realizes. She doesn't blame Carlisle for going away for, well, he calls them conferences. She wants to escape sometimes, too, but she's got a duty as a mother and a wife. Soon, however, it's happening to the rest of them (except Bella, she's far too young): late nights, strange perfumes, misplaced lipstick stains. Even Esme can't resist a drink in Port Angeles and a one night fling.

"Eternity is a long time," she says out loud, but it sounds less like fact and more like she's trying to convince herself.

Eternity is breaking at their feet.

—

One by one, the fantasy slips through Bella's fingers, until she is the only one left, stuck with a shoddy imitation of forever and a yellowing dictionary.

She can barely see the word anymore, for all the times she's traced the letters: _perfect_. A diamond turning to glass turning to ice. Fragile and thin, _thinner_ than paper.

Crack.

Shatter.

Fall to dust.


End file.
